Libraries Come Home

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Libraries Come Home

Pennsylvanians will soon be able to read thousands of periodicals and documents directly from their home computers, thanks to a new publicly funded program. Library POWER, or the Pennsylvania Online World of Electronic Resources, will be online at over half of the state's libraries in the next two months.

Michele Haskins, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, said, "We expect to expand the service by June to allow users to log in at home with their library cards and gain access to this wealth of information."

The list of resources includes several encyclopedias, historical documents, almanacs, photographic libraries, and abstract indexes of major national and local newspapers and periodicals. "If each library were to purchase these subscriptions individually it would cost over US$12 million. We're able to do it for the whole library system for just $1.25 million," Haskins said.

The state commissioner of libraries, Gary Wolfe, said this will "revolutionize the way we offer services to the people." He added that the Internet has been a huge boon for Pennsylvania's public library system, which has installed at least one computer in every library in the state.

"Since many people still don't have home computers, they are coming into the library, often for the first time, to access the Internet," he said.

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A new site called Socialgoods.com is putting conscience into e-commerce, just in time for the holiday-shopping rush.

Conceived at the Harvard Business School, Socialgoods.com has partnered with a number of online vendors – such as Amazon.com, Music Boulevard, and Beyond.com – to donate a percentage of sales to nonprofit organizations, with no markup to the buyer.

For the Scroogish, a portion of your shopping dollars going to good causes – like Oxfam America, CARE, or Jumpstart — may avert a visit from the ghost of Christmas past.

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Generation Read: The rumors are false. Gen-Xers aren't illiterate slackers. In fact, 18- to 34-year-olds buy books more than any other product online, according to a recent survey conducted by IntelliQuest, an Austin, Texas-based research and consulting firm.

"We call them Generation Plastic because we've found they are much less likely to have concerns over using their credit cards online," said Tom Fornoff, vice president of Intelliquest.

"We find some postmodern irony in the fact that the Internet was supposed to be this beast that was going to kill off books as we know them, but instead it's the No. 1 purchased item online."

The other top-selling items in the survey include music, computer software and hardware, and clothing. Additionally, the study found that three to five times as many people intend to purchase items online in the next year as currently do.